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Poetry Death

Float

by (author) Anne Carson

Publisher
McClelland & Stewart
Initial publish date
Oct 2016
Category
Death, Women Authors, Canadian
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780771018435
    Publish Date
    Oct 2016
    List Price
    $39.95

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Description

From the renowned classicist and MacArthur Prize winner: a brilliant new collection that explores myth and memory, beauty and loss, all the while playing with--and pushing--the limits of language and form.
Anne Carson continuously dazzles us with her inventiveness and the way her work changes our perspectives. With Float, she surpasses her own bar. In individual chapbooks that can be read in any order, she conjures a mix of voices, time periods, and structures to explore what makes people, memories, and stories "maddeningly attractive" when observed in liminal space. One can begin with Carson puzzling through Proust on a frozen Icelandic plain; in the art-saturated enclaves of downtown New York City; atop Mount Olympus as Zeus ponders his afterlife. There is a three-woman chorus of Gertrude Steins embodying an essay about "falling." And an investigation of monogamy and marriage as Carson anticipates the perfect egg her husband is cooking for breakfast. Exquisite, heartbreaking, disarmingly funny, Float illuminates the uncanny magic that comes with letting go of boundaries. It is Carson's most intellectually electrifying and emotionally engaging book to date.

About the author

Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. A former MacArthur Fellow, awards for her numerous books include the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Red Doc> was recently awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and the inaugural Folio Prize. Her first full poetry collection, Short Talks, was published by Brick Books in 1992 and was presented as a new edition in 2015: SHORT TALKS: BRICK BOOKS CLASSICS 1.

Anne Carson's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Anne Carson:

"A daring, learned, unsettling writer." Susan Sontag

"She is an inspiration to us all. She is that rarest of entities, a writer as fearless as she is gifted." Michael Cunningham

"Cool, resolute, smart, and lovely . . . Carson has emerged in the last two decades as a kind of prophet of the unknowable." The Village Voice

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